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Jorge Jesus has insisted that Benfica deserved to be crowned Europa League winners despite their 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in Wednesday's final.

The Eagles looked to have taken the Amsterdam ArenA showpiece to extra-time after Oscar Cardozo had cancelled out Fernando Torres' opening goal, but Branislav Ivanovic headed home an injury-time winner to hand the Blues back-to-back European titles.

The late nature of Benfica's loss forced their coach to draw parallels with last weekend's damaging 2-1 Portuguese Liga loss to Porto, and he feels his side were once more desperately unlucky not to have won the game."Chelsea came back in the same manner as Porto did [at the weekend]. We conceded a goal from a set-piece at the very end," Jesus told reporters.

It was a final with two good teams on show, but Benfica were on top for nearly the entire match. We lacked a slight tinge of luck to gain an advantage.

"And even after we equalised, we created a chance which we should have taken. We played a great game, but football punished us in a game which, on the basis of how we performed, we should have been the winners of."